American revolutionaries and Native Americans: The South Carolina experience

This dissertation examines the impact of Native Americans upon American Revolutionary leaders and the course of independence in South Carolina. Throughout British North America, members of the colonial elite engaged with Indians. In the lower South, this interaction was especially extensive and significant to the creation of the United States. Without their experiences with Native Americans, Thomas Sumter, Francis Marion and Andrew Pickens would be unknown today; William Henry Drayton may have remained a loyalist; and Henry Laurens, Christopher Gadsden and William Moultrie might not have achieved the status and skills needed to help guide their state and nation through the Revolution. Key theaters for South Carolina's colonial-native experience included the Anglo-Cherokee War, frontier trade and diplomacy, and western land speculation. Besides helping to facilitate self-sufficiency, relations with Native Americans helped shape the manner in which leading colonists approached the Revolution. Specifically, conservative members of the southern elite such as Henry Laurens and John Rutledge identified their patriotism with greater tolerance towards Indians than radical leaders such as Christopher Gadsden and William Henry Drayton. The radicals rose to power with the coming of the Revolution and independence. During 1776, they equated love of country with enmity towards Indians. Great violence was visited upon the Cherokees that year; additional attacks were mounted thereafter. This violence expressed a deepening racism against Indians in a region where racism against Africans already was deeply embedded. Following the war, some conservative revolutionaries such as Andrew Pickens worked to protect the southern nations. Concerned with national honor, during the late 1780s and 1790s, this leadership envisioned a strong central government that could order the frontier and promote coexistence between natives and settlers. With the election of 1800, however, southern radicals regained command. The southeastern nations eventually were removed. Leading manuscript sources for this dissertation include records from the British Colonial Office, the Lyman Copeland Draper collection, and various materials from the Charleston Library Society, South Caroliniana Library, and South Carolina History Society. Many published documents and contemporary sources also are included.